With the development of the Internet, two facets of teaching have been greatly facilitated. The first is the availability of information on the World Wide Web (or Web for short). The second is the technique of teaching at a distance, so referred to as “distance learning.” Because the costs of communications have become relatively low, schools at all levels are considering introducing distance learning techniques to accommodate students who may be absent, for example, due to illness, by teaching them simultaneously as if they were present in the classroom. It is obviously advantageous if the methodology of teaching is the same, whether used only within the confines of a classroom or used in combination with distance learning. This includes the methodology for the incorporation and use of Web-based material in a lesson and the use of Web browsers, which is the subject of the present invention.
At present, a system is known where material from a Web page is shown on students' screens, and a text box is provided for the students to answer a multiple-choice question. An example can be found on the Web site of One Touch Systems Inc. A system is also known where a text box is provided for entry of a multi-character word, sentence or paragraph response similar to a chat window. In & ( the latter type of response, after a student completes a response, a “Submit” or “Enter” key must be executed, before the instructor is able to see the student's response—it does not happen immediately. An example of this system is the eSchool system of ACTV Inc.
The use of a “Submit” or “Enter” key is educationally and practically undesirable for the following reasons. It has been demonstrated by studies that one-on-one tutoring is the most effective methodology of teaching. For example, see Bloom, B. S. “The 2 Sigma Problem: The Search for Methods of Group Instruction as Effective as One-to-one Tutoring.” Educational Researcher, 13(6), June/July, 1984, p. 4-16). In one-on-one teaching, the teacher is aware the moment the student starts to respond, and the teacher is able to interrupt the student, if the teacher believes that the teacher's question or statement was not understood. The problem with the use of a Submit key, is that in distance learning, where the teacher is teaching a lesson to a multiplicity of students, the teacher must wait after asking a question because the teacher does not know whether the students have heard or received the question, until some students completely formulate their responses, and then press their “Submit” or “Enter” key.
Other problems include how to automatically evaluate or manually grade such responses and how to automatically provide reinforcement feedback to students.
The addition of two-way video is helpful in knowing whether the question was heard, although the teacher can seldom see more than a few students on the teacher's screen at the same time. Indeed, even where the system is an Intranet confined to a single classroom, the teacher is idle until a number of completed responses have arrived, in order to know whether the question has not only been heard but also generally understood. This makes the teacher anxious and obviously consumes a lot of time.
Another shortcoming with present systems, where each student is required to use hypertext links on a Web page which accompanies a question submitted to the students, is that the teacher cannot follow precisely which links each student is using or has used to answer a question. Also, after illustrating an idea via a Web page shown on the screens of the students' computers, the teacher should be able to point out or indicate an item on the Web page, while verbally explaining the content of the Web page. Also, in addition to presenting a question and a Web page, an automatic feedback mechanism should be available on the students' screens to immediately inform a student when the student strays from the teacher's authored correct answer, or to reinforce through feedback, the moment the student correctly completes a response.
Furthermore, even in the absence of a teacher-authored answer, the teacher should be able to score responses on-line and to supply feedback to the students accordingly.